This is the first of thirty monthly reports on the status of the Yale University
Librarys migration to a new Library Management System (LMS). These
reports will be posted to YULIB and will also be available on the LMS Migration
Web site:

These reports will provide a convenient summary account of LMS migration
activities and the thinking that informs them. The reports and the numerous
documents that will be available at the Web site are meant to help support
the library-wide learning that is essential to a successful migration effort.

Comments about this material and the librarys migration activities
are most welcome. Such comments can made publicly on the YULIB listserv or
addressed individually to Audrey Novak, the LMS Migration Project Manager,
by using the reply function at the Web site or by sending a message directly
to Audrey at
audrey.novak@yale.edu

APRIL ACTIVITIES

A group of about 30 library staff responded to invitations sent to every
library department to participate in a pair of April planning sessions. These
sessions were designed and facilitated by Kate Reynolds, Staff Training and
Organizational Development Officer, to stimulate library-wide thinking about
how the library might best organize itself for its LMS migration work. Chris
Weideman, Assistant Director of Manuscripts and Archives, assisted the group
discussions by scribing participant responses.

13 April meeting (full day)

Participants in the 13 April meeting identified a set of
capabilities the library needs for LMS migration. They also identified
a set of values that should inform the migration and a set of
predictors for success. Closely allied to all of these were some
themes that played through the 13 April meeting.

Organizational Capabilities

The organizational structure put in place for LMS migration should be capable
of:

The capabilities just specified carry with them a strong set of explicit
or implied values, such as innovation, efficiency, decisiveness, and
cross-functional interaction. Beyond these values, and above all, the
organizational structure put in place for LMS migration should strengthen
the librarys:

Reader-centered focus

Commitment to quality improvement

Predictors of Success

Past experience with projects similar in scope or consequence to LMS migration
suggests the following attributes of project management are good predictors
of success:

Clear expectations as regards project outcomes

Strong motivation and high levels of commitment and buy-in to the project

Ability to learn from the experience of others

Broad-based participation among those who will be affected by the project

Ability to command the time and attention necessary for participants to complete
tasks

Good management and, where appropriate, delegation of authority and
responsibility

Effective communication

Unambiguous decision making authority

Completing difficult, stressful, controversial tasks promptly

Some important but inescapable tensions that might limit success must be
managed. These include:

Some ideas that found voice several times at the 13 April meeting were:

Readers and library staff alike are keen to have the improved functionality
that a new LMS will deliver; many feel that we are long overdue in securing
these benefits. We should therefore look for every opportunity to shorten
migration tasks when that can be done without damage to the success of the
project.

The tension between the efficient conduct of the project and the creation
of a rich and pervasive learning environment around the LMS migration cannot
be escaped. This tension will have to be managed with sensitivity to both
sets of values.

Excellent training in the use of the new LMS system will be needed for both
library staff and readers.

Changing character of migration tasks

Participants on 13 April also described how the nature of LMS migration work
will change over the course of the project. These changes were characterized
as follows:

We will continuously increase, improve, and refine our knowledge base, even
after some key decisions have been made. That is, while we are committed
to perfecting our knowledge, we must sometimes act on imperfect knowledge.

Our learning starts at the conceptual level and moves to the concrete; as
always, it will be important not to lose sight of the conceptual as we engage
with the concrete.

Decisions become increasingly irreversible as the migration progresses in
time.

Some significant parts of our work will be disciplined by contract performance
requirements.

In response to the views expressed at the 13 April meeting, Scott Bennett,
Audrey Novak, and Chris Weideman advanced a set of Four Propositions
about an organizational structure capable of seeing LMS migration through
to successful completion:

Structures should be as finely tuned to individual tasks as possible and
should change as the task changes. This proposition will require that individual
tasks be defined as crisply and discretely as possible; timelines and the
terms of success must be made clear. Work groups should be constituted in
ways that reflect the project values identified above as well as with regard
to the expertise needed for the particular task. Assignments to work groups
will reflect the need to engage both wide participation and to secure continuity
of knowledge throughout the migration project. Work groups should be explicitly
charged with advancing the project values appropriate to their tasks as well
as with completing their substantive assignments.

The results of such task work should be as widely communicated as possible,
to foster organization-wide learning. Such learning must itself be understood
as being one of the key ways in which individuals will participate in LMS
migration. While the primary goal of the project is the successful migration
to a new LMS, the project should also be managed to create (1) new or enhanced
expertise throughout the library on a wide set of issues, ranging from work
flow design to systems interfaces, and (2) a deepened understanding of
library-wide process redesign opportunities for working more effectively
and improving reader services. We will feel the value of these learning outcomes
long after we have completed the specific tasks of LMS migration.

A Migration Management Group should be created that is no larger than necessary
to:

Define tasks, charge working groups, and recruit working group members

Manage communication (including about its own work)

Make decisions on controverted issues

Manage overall timetable issues and project funds

Membership in the Migration Management Group should endure for the length
of the migration project and should be determined, not by the organizational
interests that the migration project must accommodate, but by the expertise
needed for successfully discharging the duties just described. The project
needs to start with and to build further expertise in such fundamental activities
as: acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, collection management, integrated
processing, reader services, representation of non-roman scripts, special
collections, and systems. Members of the Migration Management Group should
expect to spend a substantial amount of time on migration tasks. The Migration
Management Group should probably have twelve or fewer members; Audrey Novak
and Scott Bennett, as LMS Migration Project Managers, will serve on the Group
and be responsible for its working effectively.

The Migration Management Group should report its activities on not less than
a monthly basis to the Library Management Council and to a key set of library
standing committees, including the Cataloging Coordinating Committee, the
Acquisitions Support Group, the Circulation Support Group, the Collection
Development Council, the Service Quality Initiative Council, the Library
Systems Steering Committee, and whatever Process Redesign Working Group may
exist by this summer. (It is likely that one or more members of each of these
groups will serve on the Migration Management Group.) These groups will almost
certainly wish to reshape their agendas so that they can play a useful advisory
role in migration matters. None of them will, however, have oversight or
management responsibility for LMS migration.

At the same time, Audrey, Scott, and Chris prepared an
Orbis
2 Project Planidentifying individual tasks and a timetable for
completing these tasks. Necessarily, the Project Plan is more detailed for
the work to be done in the first several months. Among other things, the
plan responds to the advice given at the 13 April meeting that we should
shorten as much as possible the time required to identify the vendor for
our new LMS, to advance the date when we start our implementation
activities.

Yale University Library
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Last modified: 5 May 2000
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